I bought a bunch of those compilations of TV theme songs and later found out that they were sound-alikes.
I’m wondering if it was the same tapes that I had bought. I thought that they were great, extremely cheap, and always good. They even had, at the top of the label 'Sounds Like…", about which my friends and I made jokes. The labels were always pastel colored labels, with no pictures, but, may have had some kind of design. That’s why I wasn’t sure when Clapton issued one of his anthology or greatest hits albums, whether it was his or one of theirs.
I thought that the bands were top quality. They, IMHO, successfully replicated a LOT of famous groups, inclulding “Mountain” and “Johnny Winter And” which were decidedly bands with a unique sound.
I found a best of CD by Gene Watson (a country singer back in the 80s) and it said on the back cover that he had rerecorded the songs in order to get the royalties he had been cheated out the first time. Second I read that, no way I was going to buy the CD.
** raises hand **
Yeah. Fuckers. 14 year olds don’t have the money to burn.
The radio ad said [sub]Impressions of[/sub]The Real Artists!
All the way into the 80’s these shenanigans were going on? Well, at least they were honest about it. Who knows, maybe some people would like to support their favorite artists in that way. I mean, a lot of TV stars make money from selling autographs to appreciative fans, and I’ve always assumed that fans hand the money over out of a knowledge that there is not much of a future in being a guy from an old cult TV show.
Def Leppard did that recently. I heard a snippet of their rerecording on NPR and I couldn’t tell the difference. They really worked hard at exactly duplicating their old sound (with probably a lot of studio tricks.) Since my musical opinion of them wasn’t high to begin with, their faithful rerecording actually increased my respect for them.
No, I’m just trying to make sense out of something in the context of what I know about how the pop music business works.
I understand this. And I also understand that it’s possible the compilers were less than scrupulous, and could have included some tracks that are NOT Elton John. This is not exactly without precedent in the shady world of the music business.
You can hear excerpts of this album’s tracks here. No doubt that it’s Elton on many of them, but on a few (e.g., “Up Around the Bend”), the singer sounds nothing like Elton John. And even on the ones where we hear Elton, in some cases it may be because we’re predisposed to hear him, having been told that it’s him. My guess is that you played at least a few of these tracks to someone without identifying the artist, people would not guess it was Elton.
As for injunctions, Elton would have to take grave enough offense to any rogue tracks to bother filing suit. If he would rather forget this era of his career, a wiser course would be to say nothing and not give the album added publicity.
This is an entirely different phenomenon that has nothing to do with this issue. The Elton John recordings in question were not recorded with the intention of them “being hits” — they were recorded after the hit versions had already made the charts and were proven hits. They were strictly cash-in vehicles, intended to fool unwary record buyers in the same way many in this thread were fooled.
This is the most logical explanation for why Elton would still be recording knock-off versions as late as June 1970. The charts confirm what you’re saying here. The “Your Song” single didn’t enter the UK charts until late January 1971. (It actually broke slightly earlier in the States: mid-December 1970). I don’t have access to UK album charts, but Elton John also entered the US album charts in late 1970.
I still find it somewhat unusual that an artist who had a release on a major label wouldn’t be too busy doing promotional appearances and live gigs to have time (or inclination) to be recording knock-offs once that album was released, but it’s possible. It also could be that he was contractually obligated to the knock-off label to deliver so many sides, so he had to do this despite his major-label signing.
My favorite example of this: in early 1972, a British group known as The English Congregation had a middling U.S. Top 40 hit (#29) with a song called “Softly Whispering I Love You.”
About this time, a U.S. producer named Mike Curb, who had put out a few bland albums of MOR group singalong stuff under the name The Mike Curb Congregation, released an album entitled Softly Whispering I Love You.
The artist credit on the album sleeve read:
The Mike Curb CONGREGATION.
Mike Curb eventually went on to be a Lieutenant Governor of California. He was known for his strong anti-drug views, but as the Wikipedia entry shows, all was not necessarily what it seemed.
I always though he felt any claim to credibility with the above stunt.
Wow, that sentence got mangled in my editing!
Should read: I always felt he lost any claim to credibility with the above stunt.
How is the actual original performer re-recording his/her/their song any different than a concert performance, for which fans often willingly pay more than for a recording?
Of course it’s unlikely to be exactly the same as the original recording, but (1) it’s by the same artist, presumably more likely than any other artist to be familiar with and respect the original work, and (2) might possibly even be better. :smack:
The answer to this question is that the magic of the original song and performance — the things that made you fall in love with it in the first place — is in the grooves of the original record.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the newer version will be recorded using newer technology. Some people are turned on by this, but for me it’s just the opposite…the sound of the studio and the equipment of the day is an integral part of the original recording. Making the sound more “perfect” with modern technology (pristine, digital fidelity; “modern” drum sound, etc.), is actually a detriment to me.
And try as an artist and original musicians may to duplicate the original performance, it will always fall short. I understand artists re-recording their original songs for financial reasons. But for artistic ones? No…unless it’s a radical reworking of the song that approaches it from an entirely different direction. There is simply no reason to listen to an artist’s later re-recording of an earlier song. You have the original; why would you want to hear an inferior re-hash?
And how is a re-recording different from a concert performance? Live performances will ALWAYS be different from recorded ones. The ambiance of the room, the immediacy of the performance, the subtle variations in how the singers and instrumentalists approach the song. They’re two different animals entirely.
I certainly enjoy many live performances, though I also sympathize with John Lennon’s view. He said, in so many words, “I’m a record man.” He recalls being disappointed in many of his 50s rock ‘n’ roll idols when he saw them in live performance. Exciting as some of those performances may have been, they still, in Lennon’s ears, lacked the “magic” that was captured in the definitive recorded versions of the songs he loved.
My go-to example of this is Eric Burdon. When he sings his old Animals hits, he always improvises wildly around the vocals. As he’s performed these song hundreds if not thousands of times in his life, you can understand why he would do this. But his original performances of them were so focused and powerful, both vocally and musically. Between his vocal gyrations and the anonymous kids he gathers around him and calls “The Animals” — none of whom achieve a sound or style of playing remotely like what was on the records — everything that was great about the original records is completely lost.
Sorry to get off on a tangent, but it’s one answer to why a re-recording of an artist’s previous hit is indeed different from a concert performance.
There was one case where the reason an artist rerecorded his old songs was obvious. A few years ago, Loudon Wainwright III recorded Recovery, where he sang songs from his first few three albums almost 40 years earlier.
The point was to show a difference in interpretation as he grew older and looked back and it was brilliant.
Thanks for the tip about this! I checked out the album on Spotify.
I was a big fan of those first three Loudon LPs. It was very interesting revisiting “School Days” and “Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House,” two songs I used to perform myself decades ago.
And of course “Motel Blues,” Big Star’s cover of which I’ve listened to so many times over the years.